Stone People: Amping Up the Business
GETING BEYOND “NO”
The larger shop space coincided with Wyman’s move into granite and quartz fabrication. He admits that during the mid-2000s, he started getting more and more would-be customers asking for something besides solid-surface.
“At first, I’d just say, ‘No,’” he says. “Then we got involved in doing a template-and-install program.”
Wyman explains that he got hooked up with a large Northwest wholesaler that fabricated quartz and granite. He’d sell the jobs, template them, then drive the templates to the shop in Kent. A week later, he’d pick up the finished countertops and install them.
“When you ask four different people how to do something, you’re likely going to get four different answers. I try to get everybody to do it the right way, and to do it the same way”
Bill Wyman
Creative Countertops Inc.
He believes what made the process work was that he had good relationships with a number of contractors who weren’t interested in dealing with the big-box stores in the area, and his decision to price himself higher than they did.
“I did my pricing to be 10 percent above what Home Depot® was charging,” Wyman says. “Whatever Home Depot was charging for Silestone® or granite, I was 10 percent more on purpose; I didn’t want to fight them on price.”
Making sure his products are priced profitably remains important for Wyman. He says he’s attended numerous seminars on the topic, and when the recession began a few years ago, he rejected the requests of his salespeople to stay competitive by lowering what Creative Countertops was charging.
“There are three components to pricing,” he says. “There’s the cost of material, which is about a third; the cost of labor, which is also about a third; and then my overhead, which is about 20 percent. That leaves about five-percent to 10-percent profit. If you don’t stay within that ratio, what generally takes a hit is the profit, and you can end up going negative.”
It was certainly the bottom line that convinced Wyman to move beyond the template-and-install model he was using to offer granite.
Click photo to enlarge“After about a year-and-a-half, I looked at the books and saw I’d paid that company about $400,000,” he says. “I thought I’d better open my own shop.”
Creative Countertops’ foray into granite began modestly, with a bridge saw, router and some hand tools. Today the company has two Matrix saws, horizontal and vertical edge polishers, and an overhead router for doing sink cutouts.
It also required moving into the company’s current shop – 3,600 ft² in a small industrial complex just north of downtown. The building backs on one of Poulsbo’s main roads. When Wyman opted to add tile to his business mix four years ago, he also built an 1,800 ft² showroom in half of the next building.
“We started selling it to have something to offer people for backsplashes,” he says of the tile. “It’s really popular, but we don’t install it; we just sell it. We’ve also picked up sinks and faucets but that’s kind of tough. The online people are dirt-cheap and we can’t really compete.”
The space has also given Wyman an additional profit center. The shop frontage measures 90’, and the area next to the sidewalk is lined with custom-made wooden racks on which he displays his remnants.
“It’s easy for customers to walk down the sidewalk and see the pieces,” he says. “We’re probably selling three-to-five remnants every week for vanities. They’re all paid for because it’s all scrap.”
